Days 36-47: Happenstance

March 15-16, 2006

Some days are more bizarre than others to say the least!

Since we are very pragmatic people (okay, okay at least about 50 percent
of us are! :)), we arrive in West End having precisely planned every subsequent
step: no spontaneous decisions, we will start from visiting all the major
dive shops in town, will request seeing the diving equipment (as if we've
got any clue about good or bad diving equipment :)) , talk to as many PADI
instructors as possible (the first teacher is the most important one, no matter
the field of study!), compare the prices of the PADI courses in different
dive shops, and finally take all the time we need to make a competent decision
about the place we are going to dive with.
Well, it's alright if things don't happen exactly as planned But when
everything goes completely opposite, and you know for sure it's happening
for your own good, that's bizarre!

So we arrive in West End quite late in the afternoon, park the car somewhere
in the center of the unfamiliar village, and, since there is a dive shop just
across the street, we decide to step in and check them out. There is a big
white logo with skull and bones on the wall, which brings back recent memories
of Captain Berto Besides, below the funky logo it says that they speak
Weirdish here - bingo! - this might be the only language to communicate with
us after the extremely eventful day we've had at the port of Coxen Hole. The
dive shop is about to close, but there still is one very wet guy inside -
looks like he might know something about water - let's ask him!!
For the next 5 minutes the wet fellow does the talking and we do the listening.
Alright, obviously he knows enough about diving, but let's stick to the dive
shop research plan and inquire him how this place is better than other fifty
dive shops in West End. - "Well, if you like us, you dive with us - if
you like the other place, you dive there!" Doesn't sound like a big lack
of self-confidence, does it?? :) (Could have at least pretended that he liked
the question, who is the customer here?!! :))

This was how we came to know Tyll's Dive, the best dive shop in town, and
met Adi, one of the best (and the strictest!) diving instructors in the world!
This also was the moment where our rational behavior on Roatan vanished before
it even had a chance to come out :) Guess if we went to any other dive shops
at all? Not a single one! After 5 minutes at Tyll's, it suddenly became so
clear that we wanted to dive there, and that the very wet and extremely self-confident
character had to be our diving teacher - we don't want no other!!
Just don't ask us to explain why we did it this way because we have no reasonable
explanation - we normally don't do that :) Sometimes you simply know a certain
thing is the right one to do.

So Adi, see you tomorrow?
Our lazy days on the Caribbean beaches were terminated with this question.
Yes, be here at 8:30 AM, here are your two big fat PADI course books, you
must read chapters 1 & 2 overnight so we could have a briefing tomorrow
in the morning, followed by a knowledge review test, and then straight into
the water. At 3 PM you will watch the first 2 parts of instruction video,
and maybe we'll be more or less done by 5 or 6 PM .

The next 4 days passed in a flash: get up, run to Tyll's, watch instruction
video, listen to Adi's lecture, dive, another briefing, take a quiz, short
lunch break, dive again, go back to the hotel and read the endless pages of
the fat PADI book till late evening . get up next morning, run to Tyll's
:)) May sound a bit monotonous, but it was far from that - every minute of
the course was so much fun that at the end of a day we would hardly be able
to wait for the next morning!

Diving looks quite easy before you actually try it In fact, learning
diving is quite a jagged little pill! First of all, you will be soaked almost
24/7, so you better be someone who really loves water :) And believe it or
not, you start trembling in +27C degree water, if you stay in it for a long
time (and you will, if you're learning to dive).
Second, PADI courses deal with the whole array of subjects that you'll probably
have never even heard about: diving equipment set-up and maintenance; safety
and emergency procedures; quite an impressive list of unfamiliar technical
jargon which you have to memorize right away to communicate with your instructor
and fellow divers; underwater navigation; buoyancy control; and even a good
deal of mathematics for calculating how deep you can go and how long you can
stay at a certain depth

Simultaneously, here comes an extensive list of DON'Ts: don't ever hold your
breath, don't touch the coral, don't ascend rapidly, don't go too deep, don't
forget to constantly check your air, don't lose your dive buddy, don't step
on a scorpion fish, don't play with moray eels, don't tease the sharks or
other divers, don't forget any item on the DON'Ts list because that might
be lethal! Finally, don't even think about blaming anybody else but yourself
if you were stupid enough to forget one of the DON'Ts.

Lastly, some of the things you have to do underwater while learning to dive
are not that pleasant at all! For example, you must take your mask off and
prove it to the instructor that you can swim around without the mask for at
least one minute and not start panicking (seeing almost nothing, and having
your nose full of salty water and your eyes itching like crazy makes this
task much less fun than it may sound!!). Or you will have to take all your
equipment off underwater, and then put it back on. You may never need any
of these tricks, but you must learn how to behave underwater in case of an
unexpected situation.

Hope we have not alarmed you too much, or if we have - big apology, we didn't
mean to! In sum, if you decide to learn diving, don't expect a walk on the
clouds and take the classes very, very seriously. This is a course with stuff
to learn, and if you fail to - blame yourself! In the end, it's all pure fun,
and the rare unpleasant moments pass by like an eye-blink, leaving you very
delighted you were able to do that!! :)

The fourth day (the last day of the PADI Open Water Diver course) was somewhat
nostalgic: the exam had been successfully passed, all the classes, chapters,
videos and dives completed sounds like a long-awaited relief and a perfect
reason to celebrate, but we are so NOT ready to leave Roatan, Tyll's Dive
and Adi Let's stay for the Advanced course??! Now, that's a relief!
One more week of diving!
This was our first failure to leave Roatan. :)

PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certificate may be worth considering not only
if you are looking for a valid reason to extend your stay on Roatan :) It
also allows you to dive deeper (as deep as the maximum recreational diving
depth allows: 40 meters/ 132 feet), see more interesting things (most ship
wrecks are found deeper than 18m/ 60ft), and experience something really funky
(what is 'nitrogen narcosis' - something that happens to you below 30 meters/
100 feet experienced divers compare it to a joint :)). Finally, you
get a chance to try night diving - another incredible experience you shouldn't
miss! And, most importantly, another justified week on Roatan :))